Human Origins

by S. Laing

But I am inclined to doubt whether the tradition of such local floods was ever preserved long enough to account for deluge-myths. All experience shows that the memory of historical events fades away with surprising rapidity when it is not preserved by written records. If, as Xenophon records, all memory of the great city of Nineveh had disappeared in 200 years after its destruction, how can it be expected that oral tradition shall preserve a recollection of prehistoric local floods magnified into universal deluges?

And when the deluge-myths of different nations are examined closely, it generally appears that they have had an origin rather in solar myths or cosmogonical speculations, than in actual facts. For instance, the tradition of a deluge in Mexico has often been referred to as a confirmation of the Noachian flood. But when looked into, it appears that this Mexican deluge was only a part of their mythical cosmogony which told of four successive destructions and renovations of the world by the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The first period being closed by earthquakes, the second by hurricanes, the third by volcanoes, it did not require any local tradition to ensure the fourth being closed by a flood.

Again, deluge-myths must have inevitably arisen from the presence of marine shells, fossil and recent, in many localities where they were too numerous to escape notice. If palæolithic stone implements and bones of fossil elephants gave rise to myths of thunderbolts and giants, sea-shells on mountain-tops must have given rise to speculations as to deluges. At the very beginning of history, Egyptian and Chaldæan astronomers were sufficiently advanced in science to wish to account for such phenomena, and to argue that where sea-shells were found the sea must once have been. Many of the deluge-myths of antiquity, such as that of Deucalion and Pyrrha, look very much as if this had been their origin. They are too different from the Chaldæan and Biblical Deluge, as for instance in repeopling the world by stones, to have been copied from the same original, and they fit in with the very general belief of ancient nations that they were autochthonous.

In a majority of cases, however, I believe it will be found that deluge-myths have originated from some transmission, more or less distorted, of the very ancient Chaldæan astronomical myths of the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac. This is clearly the case in the Hindoo mythology, where the fish-god Ea-han, or Oannes, is introduced as a divine fish who swims up to the Ark and guides it to a place of refuge.

The legend in Genesis is much closer to the original myth, and in fact almost identical with that of the deluge of Hasisadra in the Chaldæan epic, discovered by Mr. George Smith among the clay tablets in the British Museum. This poem was obviously based on an astronomical myth. It was in twelve chapters, dedicated to the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. The adventures of Izdubar, like those of Heracles, have obvious reference to these signs, and to the sun's birth, growth, summer splendour, decline to the tomb when smitten with the sickness of approaching winter by the incensed Nature-goddess, and final new birth and resurrection from the nether world.

The Deluge is introduced as an episode told to Izdubar during his descent to the lower regions by his ancestor Hasisadra, one of the God-kings, who are said to have reigned for periods of tens of thousands of years in a fabulous antiquity. It has every appearance of being a myth to commemorate the sun's passage through the rainy sign of Aquarius, just as the contests of Izdubar and Heracles with Leo, Taurus, Draco, Sagittarius, etc., symbolize his passage through other zodiacal constellations. It forms the eleventh chapter of the Epic of Izdubar, corresponding to the eleventh month of the Chaldæan year, which was the time of heavy rains and floods.

Now, this deluge of Hasisadra, as related by Berosus, and still more distinctly by Smith's Izdubar tablets, corresponds so closely with that of Noah that no doubt can remain that one is taken from the other. All the principal incidents and the order of events are the same, and even particular expressions, such as the dove finding no rest for the sole of her foot, are so identical as to show that they must have been taken from the same written record. Even the name Noah is that of Nouah, the Semitic translation of the Accadian god who presided over the realm of water, and navigated the bark or ark of the sun across it, when returning from its setting in the west to its rising in the east. The chief difference is the same as in the Chaldæan and Biblical cosmogonies of the creation of the universe—viz. that the former is Polytheistic, and the latter Monotheistic. Where the former talks of Bel, Ea, and Istar, the latter attributes everything to Jehovah or Elohim. Thus the warning to Hasisadra is given in a dream sent by Ea, who is a sort of Chaldæan Prometheus, or kindly god, who wishes to save mankind from the total destruction contemplated by the wrathful superior god, Bel; while in Genesis it is "Elohim said unto Noah." In Genesis the altar is built to the Lord, who smells the sweet savour of the sacrifice, while in the Chaldæan legend the altar is built to the seven gods, who "smelt the sweet savour of sacrifice, and swarmed like bees about it."

The Chaldæan narrative is more prolix, more realistic, and, on the whole, more scientific. That is, it mitigates some of the more obvious impossibilities of the Noachian narrative. Instead of an ark, there is a ship with a steersman, which was certainly more likely to survive the perils of a long voyage on the stormy waters of an universal ocean. The duration of the Deluge and of the voyage is shortened from a year to a little more than a month; more human beings are saved, as Hasisadra takes on board not his own family only, but several of his friends and relations; and the difficulty of repeopling the earth from a single centre is diminished by throwing the date of the Deluge back to an immense and mythical antiquity. On the other hand, the moral and religious significance of the legend is accentuated in the Hebrew narrative. It is no longer the capricious anger of an offended Bel which decrees the destruction of mankind, but the righteous indignation of the one Supreme God against sin, tempered by justice and mercy towards the upright man who was "perfect in his generations."

If we had to decide on internal evidence only, there could be little doubt that the Hebrew narrative is of much later date than the Chaldæan. It is, in fact, very much what might be expected from a revised edition of it, made at the date which is assigned by all competent critics for the first collection of the legends and traditions of the Hebrew people into a sacred book—viz. at or about the date when the first mention is made of such a book as being discovered in the Temple in the reign of Josiah. Kuenen, Wellhausen, and other leading authorities place the date of the Elohistic and Jehovistic narratives, which include the Creation and Deluge, even later; and, if not compiled during or after the Babylonian Captivity, they were certainly revised, and have come down to us in their present form after that event. Even the most orthodox critics, such as Dillman and Canon Driver, admit that they were written in the golden age of Hebrew literature, and in the spirit of the later prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and do not think it possible to assign to them an earlier date than 800 or 900 b.c., while many parts may be much later.

But the question is not one of internal evidence only, but of the positive fact that, even if these chapters of Genesis were written by Moses, or about 1350 b.c., and even accepting the Septuagint addition of 700 years to the already mythical duration of the lives of the patriarchs, the date of the Biblical Deluge cannot be carried back beyond 3100 or 3200 b.c., while a practically identical account of the same event is given, as a legendary episode of fabulous antiquity, in an epic poem, based on a solar myth, which was certainly reduced to writing many centuries before the earliest possible date of the Scriptural Deluge. It is absolutely certain also that the Egyptian records and traditions, which extend in an uninterrupted succession of dynasties and kings for at least 2000 years before this alleged universal Deluge, know nothing whatever of such an event; and, on the contrary, assume an unvarying continuance of the ordinary laws of Nature.